


goodbye to the paperback age

by orphan_account



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Human, Digital Stalking, Drinking, Ensemble Cast, M/M, Maria DeLuca & Michael Guerin Friendship, Music, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:53:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28392693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The one where Alex makes it big in the music scene and a drunk depressed Michael slides into his semi-famous DMs.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	goodbye to the paperback age

**Author's Note:**

> title from Bye-bye Darling by Børns
> 
> up to my eyeballs in aus yall
> 
> stay safe, stay healthy

  
As he is whenever he’s coming up with his best ideas, Michael is incredibly drunk. It’s actually, genuinely impressive how well he’s walking—stumbling—okay maybe he sits down for a second, sue him.

Head tips way, way back. Stars swimming in black milk. Michael lifts his palms up, overbalances with his arms above his squat and falls flat on his ass. Laughter into the dirt, left cheek pressing on the ground. A car rolls to a careful stop on the road beside him.

“You alive?” Maria leans over toward the rolled down passenger window, halo of curls radiant under the ripe orange streetlights. “Guerin? How many fingers?”

Michael strains his head up, neck aching at the angle. He squints. “Five?” 

“Alright, get in.”

“No _nono_ … no I’m—” Michael hiccups, then burps into his hand. Like a ghost, he can see Max’s dumb disgusted grin as a kid, always pretending to be horrified around Iz, but always laughing the hardest at Michael’s theatrical bleching. The memory shivers through him. He knocks his head back into the sand. “I’m fine. Seriously. I need some alone time, some _me time_ , y’know? Respect the, uh, the process.” He magics his fingers around his face. “Shazam. I’m gonna make it all disappear.”

“Uh-huh.” Maria’s unconvinced. Her car idles quietly, head-beams casting long strips of light among the shadows. 

“I’ll walk it off back to the trailer. I’m literally ten minutes on foot, Deluca. It’ll be good for me. Bracing, or whatever, fuck.” Michael’s eyes pinch and he digs his knuckles against his forehead. “I’m already getting my fucking hangover headache, just let a lying dog sleep it off, yeah?”

Maria chews her bottom lip for a moment, mental math playing out in her eyes. The lights from the Wild Pony’s sign throw a colorful glow over Michael on the ground. He knows Maria wants to help him, but she also knows how fucking ornery he can be when he wants to be alone, and they can both agree she shouldn’t have to deal with him right now.

She eyes him again. “You got your phone?” Michael grunts. “Show it to me.” With a mostly put-upon huff, he digs around his pockets and holds it up with a little wave. “Okay. You text me in half an hour that you’re home tucked into footie pajamas and I won’t call the Sheriff to do a wellness check on your comatose body.”

“Yessir. Ma’am. _Madam_.”

“You wish.”

“On second thought, maybe I should climb into this beautiful stranger’s car…”

Maria’s laughing as she puts the car in drive, gold earrings flashing as she turns away with her grin. “Don’t fall in another cactus.”

“One time!” Michael struggles onto an elbow as Maria pulls away. He shakes a clump of sand at her brake lights. “One time. Fuck. Good going, genius.”

He’s still for a moment under the stars, vast desert silent and dark all around him; he feels utterly untethered from earth and sky. An object in motion… Michael almost laughs. His life is stagnant, a smooth surface polished like glass, still and unchanging. There’s nothing for him out here, or anywhere. Fuck, he’s at that stage of the night. He gropes at his phone, 2:59 appears at the top in little white numerals. Another laugh swells his throat—he hopes the universe is shining a cosmic stage light on his head, the funniest joke in the solar system. 

Michael yawns into the heel of his hand, rubs his eye, and checks his social media because, as established, he has some of his best ideas when he’s wasted. He swipes his thumb down the feed, vision swimming with emojis. Random high school birthday, Iz and Max’s great aunt’s birthday, great aunt’s funeral, news, Isobel lounging effortlessly poolside in enormous sunglasses, ads for champagne, begging someone to buy this ugly old couch, dog’s birthday, Alex Manes’ new album, news, Max and Liz drinking wine—wait.

_Alex Manes’ Second Album_ Home is Where the Hurt Is _Releasing September 15th! Pre-order Sales Begin Today!!!_

Holy fucking hell. For several seconds, Michael can only stare, trying to convince himself he’s having an intense whiskey-induced hallucination. The advertisement poster has the album cover art, a black and white square with Alex Manes’ hard, unblinking visage peering from its center. He’ll never be proud of this, but in the moment his first and only thought is: _fuck, he looks good_.

The monochrome scheme works well for Alex’s dewy skin and fathomless eyes. An artful scatter of facial hair that has all of Michael’s teenage fantasies melting away, replaced by this new, adult version of untouchable perfection. Hair longer than Michael remembers, tucked behind his ears, falling in a few loose strands across his forehead. His stare feels like a challenge, a personal condemnation to Michael himself, calling him out. _Look what you missed._

A cold slap of sobriety hits Michael’s cheek as he leans forward on his knees, already pressing the embedded link—3:09, shit, he’s got to move his ass, Maria only issues promises she intends to keep and the last thing he needs is a pre-dawn lecture from his fucking high school bully’s _mom_ —his life really, actually is a joke—so he heaves himself up with effort and trips toward home. 

For the first few minutes he tries to navigate both his phone and his feet, but after a couple of stumbles he fully faceplants into a cluster of scratchy sagebrush. Sharp branches graze his face and arms. He curses and spits out a leaf as he awkwardly climbs out of the snarled bush. Wipes his face across his sleeve and gusts a breath when no blood appears. He can’t have a repeat of the cactus incident or Max might try to set up some unbearable intervention on his behalf, so he tucks the phone back away and watches his steps the rest of the way home.

Pocket burning, he doesn’t bother settling in his trailer after he makes it past the junkyard. Skips up the steps, thrashes some laundry and random papers around before uncovering his laptop and sets himself up outside. Legs sprawling in a plastic, slotted lawn chair, the meekest peak of light is seeping through the black night, diluting the sky to a heavy navy, stars still spinning. His world is the white-bright screen on his lap, fingers trembling from too many beers as he opens up the search bar and types in the last name he was expecting to come across today.

The articles are scattered the farther back he searches, but within the last year a solid dozen profiles of Alex have been published. Mostly indie music reviewers, but a handful of serious publications have sat down with him. His first album, _Voyage Familiar_ , released only two years ago. He clicks through a Rolling Stones interview, the most recent one available.

_**Q** : Your first album had a lot of emotion, very intense emotion. _

_**AM** : It was a rage album, yeah. You can say it. _

_**Q** : Well, alright. Yes, the theme of rage is present in almost every song. Some have said that’s part of what connected you to your audience so immediately. You’re singing about an anger that most people can feel pretty close to the surface these days. _

_**AM** : That’s nice. I mostly felt like I was screaming in a cave while recording it, so I’m—I guess I’m glad I wasn’t screaming alone. _

_**Q** : But you say this album has a very different tone? _

_**AM** : Yeah, I mean… Yeah. The first album—and I don’t want to disappoint anyone who liked it, really, because I appreciate that support more than I know how to say. But that’s just where I was, creatively, emotionally, physically—angry. Just pissed at the world. Like you said, I don’t know, maybe that was relatable. But I got it out, you know? And I don’t want to carry that anger with me for the rest of my life. So this album is more about where I’m at now, processing things and thinking back over my life and why I had gotten to that level of anger. This album’s more like a love letter, than anything. To the past and the future and to my fans, I guess, to a certain extent. I’m just really grateful for where I am, and whether or not anybody even listens to it, I’m glad I got to finally say what I needed to say in this album. _

_**Q** : Oh, I think we’ll all be listening. _

Holy shit. Michael sits back, exhaling in a gust. He knew Alex was gonna pursue music—hell, the last time he saw him was with his guitar clutched by the neck, wearing severe eyeliner and the angriest scowl Michael had ever seen—and for the first few years after Alex left town, he tried to keep up with his name popping up on random Myspace accounts at rave shows or underground indie bars, catching glimpses of him in over-exposed photos that never captured a smile, giving Michael a sharply-nauseous feeling on how the whole _following your dream_ thing was turning out. And it wasn’t like he’d forgotten about Alex—lord knew his life would’ve been a lot easier if he had—but it was torture to scroll through random Iowa blogs about this hot new artist blowing through town. Alex didn’t want him in his life and he had to accept the clean break, let it go. Maybe he’d hoped to turn on the radio one day and hear a familiar voice, rest assured in the knowledge that Alex was happy and successful on some unbearably sunny beach somewhere. 

Now that it’s happened, though, and Michael can scroll through Alex’s Wiki page ( _Born in Roswell, New Mexico to parents Jesse and Mindy Manes…_ a surreal thing to read, to see the entirety of his and Alex’s relationship explained away in two sentences about his birthplace and high school education—equally surreal is the _Coming Out_ subtitle on his page that Michael is way too fucking sober to read) and watch his rising star—it’s made him hungry, not satisfied.

Alex’s Twitter account is mostly self-promotion and furious political tweets. A few sideways selfies with an adorable beagle. A little rainbow emoji next to his verified checkmark name. His DMs are open.

Michael’s hands are literally sweating, gut tight and twisting, heartbeat drumming like a fist against his skull. Whatever, Alex’s DMs are open but he has a couple hundred thousand followers—so the likelihood of him ever even _seeing_ Michael’s message—let alone responding—and who knows, maybe he’s got one of those social media coaches or whatever who runs the account but— 

No. Somehow, even though Michael can acknowledge how batshit the thought seems, he just _knows_ it’s Alex, because it sounds like him. And even after all this time, Michael can feel the certainty in his bones like nothing else he’s ever felt: they know each other, through and through. 

He sets the laptop down and stretches his legs, circling the fire. He ducks inside his trailer to chug some water and chew on the crust of an old pizza. He lays down on his bed, squeezes his eyes shut, throws away the nasty box of Little Caesars, reaches for the bourbon before immediately putting it back, and composes and re-composes messages to Alex in his head like he’s trying to write a one-man play. Dawn is in full swing now, horizon buttering up as the mountains glow a tender orange and the sparse clouds streak white over the sunrise. He sits in his lawn chair and types out a dozen different versions of what he wants to say, heart knocking its steady fist against the back of his teeth the whole time. He can’t do it, he won’t do it, he doesn’t want to—it's dumb and pointless and he’s still a little drunk, can’t even glance at Alex’s profile picture for too long without an old warmth motoring to life, rumbling through his chest at the very sight.

He presses send.


End file.
